“Oh, Dad. Besides, finally, I’ll know what really happened. We’ll know,” I said.
“I wasn’t dying to find out,” he replied. “And that still might not be the truth. Lies can be written as well as spoken, you know.” He started to turn away.
“I’ll be down in a few minutes,” I said.
“Does this mean you’re not going to mall-rat it today?”
“Yes, Dad, that’s what it means,” I said, laughing.
He was smiling himself as he walked away.
I returned to the diary like someone starving for news from the outside world, just like someone locked in an attic for years might be.
First Days
Cathy likes to think of us as regular middle-class people living ordinary lives in the small city of Gladstone, Pennsylvania. She bases this on the fact that our house isn’t any larger or much smaller than any other house on our street and that our father drives a modest Chevy. I don’t know why it’s so important for her to think of us as ordinary. I will never think of myself that way.
When I told her that today, she looked at me strangely. She even seemed a little angry about it. I think she believes being ordinary makes her safe or something. I know she thinks all the kids from wealthy families are snobs, especially Lucille Tompkins, whose father owns four jewelry stores. One of her girlfriends told her what the word “snob” means, and she is worried that someone might call her that. I have the feeling someone told her I was a snob and she didn’t know what to say or how to defend me.
She remembers that we weren’t the first to get a television and acts as if that’s something to be proud of, but we did get one about the same time as our neighbors, the Milestones, got one, and Mr. Milestone was manager of the closest supermarket. Actually, Cathy’s the one growing into a snob. She thinks we’re better than rich people even though we don’t have as much, because rich people don’t love each other as much. I told her that was ridiculous, and she told me I was the ridiculous one. I don’t know why I even bother explaining things to her now. Her brain isn’t developed enough to comprehend serious or complicated thoughts. Actually, I can sympathize with why she’s always so confused about us.
Momma doesn’t have an expensive fur coat, but she has very nice, fashionable clothes, often saving whatever she can to buy herself something in style.
In fact, Cathy doesn’t know this, but I have seen Momma search through Daddy’s pants and jacket pockets looking for money he had forgotten was in there. I even know where she hides it in a shoe box at the bottom of her closet. If Daddy notices her thievery, he doesn’t say anything as far as I know. Of course, I’ve wondered why she doesn’t just ask him for the money. Maybe he would think the things she wanted to buy were silly. Or maybe she just feels guilty about spending money on anything other than necessities. She can rationalize it if she steals the money, because it was in his pocket and looks like small change. I wouldn’t say this to her face, but Momma rationalizes often. When I learned what that meant, I nodded to myself. It’s like saying white lies, making excuses, but doing it to tell yourself you’re protecting someone else, keeping someone from being hurt, often mostly yourself. Daddy works so hard for what we have. She would feel bad if she believed she was taking advantage of his trust.
No one wants to look average, especially our mother. I would agree that she had a modest engagement and wedding ring, but over the years, Daddy did buy her some fairly expensive necklaces and earrings and bracelets, probably even when we couldn’t afford it. Maybe he got good deals from Lucille Tompkins’s father. The jewelry, however, was nothing that would make her look ostentatious. My father has a very good sense of taste.
He often told us that something didn’t have to be big to be beautiful or outstanding. I remember him recently telling Cathy and me, “Subtlety is as effective in life as it is in advertising, children.”
He should know, I thought. Daddy is in public relations for a computer manufacturer that needs a great deal of promotion.
Cathy’s too young to understand what he meant by subtlety. Afterward, I tried to explain it to her, but she shook her head and told me that I use too many big words and if I keep filling my head with bigger and more words, it will explode. I don’t know where she gets these idiotic ideas. She hates to read. I think she hates doing anything alone, and that’s why she doesn’t read much.
She’s two years younger than I am, but I’m confident I could have understood what I was telling her when I was her age. I am and always was an avid reader, and with the exception of one B in fifth-grade history last quarter, unfairly given to me by Mr. Firth, a stuffy man with sagging cheeks and a belly that looked like he had swallowed a whole watermelon, I have always been an A-plus student. Mr. Firth has corn-yellow teeth from smoking every chance he gets. I see him rush into the faculty room between classes or during lunch to light up. He always has redness around his eyes that I recently diagnosed as ocular rosacea, a chronic condition that has many possible causes.
My father gave me a “Merck Manual” this year, and I devoured it. He bought it for me because even at a young age, I was asking questions about diseases, illnesses, and surgeries neighbors had.
“We’ve got a potential doctor in our midst, Corrine,” he declared at dinner one night, and then produced the manual. It looked used, but that doesn’t matter to me. Books can get wet and crinkle, and old book pages can turn yellow, but the words don’t disappear for a very long time. Daddy said, “A good book is like good wine. Its wisdom ages and becomes more valuable with time.” He winked at me when he said it, because he knew I believed that, too. Momma just shook her head as if Daddy and I lived in our own world, and Cathy grimaced and said, “Ugh. Old books smell.”
I know that other boys my age get ecstatic over new bikes, Erector Sets, electric trains, new sleds, and baseball gloves, but this manual is the most exciting gift Daddy has ever gotten me, and it is my most prized possession. He even wrote inside the cover: “To our future Dr. Dollanganger. Heal and protect those in pain. Love, Dad.”
I read and reread that dedication almost every night. For me, it’s sort of a prayer. Probably the man I respect the most next to my father is our family doctor, Dr. Bloom. He has an office in his home and lives with his mother. He’s not an old man, but he’s older than most men are when they get married. I don’t think it’s because he doesn’t like girls or anything. I think it’s because he’s too devoted to his sacred work of healing. He just hasn’t found the right woman yet, the woman who will tolerate his rushing out to make hospital calls at all times of the night and leaving parties to care for someone who’s suddenly very ill.
Dr. Bloom looked at my hands once and said, “You’ve got a doctor’s hands, Christopher, strong fingers. You could be a great surgeon someday.”
I don’t think anything anyone ever said to me made me feel any better about myself. I told Daddy and Momma at dinner that night, and Cathy gave us her usual “Ugh” when she understood that surgeons put their hands inside people’s bodies.
“Get an appendix attack, and you’ll be happy to have a doctor do it,” I said.
Her eyes nearly popped. “Don’t frighten her, Christopher,” Momma said.
“People do get appendix attacks, Momma.”
Cathy had tears of fear in her eyes.
“Now, now,” Daddy told her, embracing her quickly. “You won’t have an appendix attack.” He gave me a look that said, Be careful, Christopher. She’s just a little girl.
I nodded.
He was right. I had to control my tongue and think harder first before I spoke.
Doctors especially have to know how to do that. You have to learn to keep certain things secret for the patient’s own benefit.
I heard my father call to me.
I put the diary aside and hurried down for the lunch he was preparing. All I could think of was to eat and get back up there to continue reading. My father had our sandwiches out and a jug of water and glasses.
“Thanks, Dad,” I said, slipping into my chair. He looked at me and sat. “What?” I asked before I took a bite. I could always tell when he had something on his mind.
“You didn’t call any of your friends yet about that diary, did you?”
“No. I thought I’d read it first.”
“Good. I don’t want you to tell anyone about it for a while. Maybe never.” He bit into his sandwich, and I bit into mine.
“Why not?” I couldn’t imagine he had the same reason I did for keeping it to myself.
“For now, I don’t want to broadcast that we found that. All I need is for this new prospective buyer to get second thoughts like so many others have over the years since the second fire. I don’t want to perpetuate any of those Halloween stories. The bank wouldn’t be happy with me. And the bank could confiscate that diary. Technically, they own everything on the property.”
“Okay. It’s our secret . . . and Todd’s.”
“Todd doesn’t know what you found. He was too disappointed that it wasn’t jewelry or money. I’m sure he’s forgotten it was anything else by now.”
“What if Christopher tells us in the diary where his little brother was buried or something?”
My father stopped eating. “What?”
“It could be in there is all I’m saying. I’m not saying I read it yet. He did write early in the pages that his little brother suffered a horrible death.”
“How horrible? What does he say happened to him?”
“I don’t know yet, Dad. Maybe he really was poisoned; maybe it was something worse.”
He sat back. I could see I already had revealed too much, but as my mother often said, “Words are like toothpaste. Once they come out, you can’t put them back in.”
“I don’t like this. Now you’re scaring me. You gonna go and have nightmares after this?”
“I don’t have nightmares. Stop being a worrywart,” I said, which was another one of his own expressions. I asked my English teacher what it meant, and he told me with a shrug that it just meant someone who worried so much he caused others to do the same. “It’s just . . . a diary.”
“A diary written by a kid kept locked up in an attic of a nuthouse for more than three years,” Dad said. “Madness is madness no matter how you cut it. Maybe he’s making it all up, including the way his brother died.”
“I’m not going to go crazy reading it, Dad. Will you stop?”
“You let me know when you’re finished with it.”
“Why? Will you burn it or something?”
“Just let me know, and don’t ask so many questions, or I’ll take away your what, who, where, why, and how.”
We stared at each other a moment, and then we both smiled. The world I was about to enter through this diary was so unlike mine. I couldn’t even begin to imagine how a grandmother would so harm her own grandchildren, but I was just beginning the diary. It wouldn’t be long before I would find out the truth.
Maybe.
Maybe at the end, I would discover that Christopher never knew himself. The diary could simply be his attempt to get to know himself, and perhaps he was writing what he thought he should and not what he knew to be true. Reading it would be like taking a ride to see someone who wasn’t there. Dad was always telling me to consider my time the most valuable asset I had. “Try to spend it wisely. A minute lost can’t be made up like you can make up a dollar lost,” he lectured. “I don’t mean you shouldn’t relax and have fun, but try to make it worth something.”
I cleaned up the lunch dishes. Dad went into the living room to watch a basketball game. He called to me when he heard me starting for my room.
“Kristin?”
“Yes, Dad?”
“I’m serious. Don’t you go blabbin’ about that diary.”
“I promise. I won’t. Stop worrying about it.”
“I don’t like your reading it. I should have paid more attention when you told me what it was,” he mumbled, but I didn’t reply.
I didn’t charge up the stairs, but I didn’t walk up slowly, either.
Moments later, I was reading again, but now, after the concern Dad had exhibited at lunch, I couldn’t help being nervous about it. I knew the power of the written word, how too often people were influenced by something they read and how it changed their behavior. As Mr. Feldman, one of my English teachers, would tell us, “If reading wasn’t so important and influential, why would they ban books in dictatorships?”
Nevertheless, nothing would stop me from turning these pages, I thought, and began again.
Our lives are full of secrets. Cathy likes to think love is what floats about the most in our home. She thinks this way because she listens in on our parents talking to each other whenever she can. I see how she does it. She pretends to be busy with something and not be paying attention, but she’s hanging on their every word, especially the way they express how much they love each other. I know when she comes running into my room to tell me about something they’ve said that she is probably exaggerating.
Cathy can be very dramatic. I think she believes we live in a movie or something and that our mother and father are famous stars because Daddy is so handsome and Momma is so beautiful.
She came running in this afternoon to tell me that Daddy practically “swooned” over Momma when he saw her. I had the feeling that she got the word “swooned” from our mother, who probably has told her that Daddy swooned over something she did with her hair or clothes. Cathy would never have come up with a word like that on her own.
Our mother had gone to the beauty salon earlier today and had her nails done. Momma lets Cathy go into her bathroom when she’s taking a bath in her perfumed bubble water sometimes. They leave the door open so I can see them. Momma isn’t shy about being naked in front of us. I know she is very proud of her figure, which is a figure most women envy, but she also knows I try to think of the human body the way a doctor should. There have been times when she’ll ask me to wash her back for her. Cathy stands to the side, watching enviously, so I have to let her do it, too.
Cathy often sits on the edge of the tub and listens to our mother go on and on about beauty tips so that when she’s old enough, she’ll be ready. On more than one occasion, I’ve seen Cathy imitating her, luxuriating in her own bath and pretending to put on makeup the way Momma does. She comes into my room when she does her hair and puts on a dress to ask me how she looks. Twice this week, she asked me to wash her back the way I would wash Momma’s. Usually, I do it too quickly, and she complains.
“Am I as beautiful as our mother?” she always wants to know.
“No,” I tell her. “Not yet. You’re too young to be beautiful like our mother.”
She hates my answers. “You’re so correct all the time, Christopher. Ugh!” she cries, frustrated, and charges out to complain about me.
I am correct. It’s important to me to be correct, and I don’t want to live in some fantasy, some movie. Facts are more important than dreams.
Cathy’s a girl. She may never believe that facts are more important. I do know some women who do, especially some of my teachers, like Miss Rober, who teaches math and taps the blackboard so hard to make a decimal point that she often breaks the chalk. Miss Rober is fifty-something and has never been married. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t wish she was.
Last week, I told Momma that, and she looked at me funny and asked, “How do you know she does? Some women don’t, you know.”
“She’s not a nun, Momma. She wears her clothes to attract men, very tight sweaters and skirts. She likes to show cleavage.”
“Christopher Dollanganger! I do believe you’re getting too old for your age,” she said, which at first I thought was just a funny misstatement but later understood.
Maybe she won’t be asking me to wash her back as much or will close her door whenever she gets dressed. She won’t come in on me when I bathe and will avoid looking at me when I get dressed.
There will be something betwe
en us that has never been: embarrassment.
I hope it doesn’t come to that, but then again, I know it’s as inevitable as facial hair and shaving.
I paused to take a breath. I couldn’t remember when my father had looked uncomfortable looking at me when I was naked. Until she became ill, Mom would help me bathe. Once I was old enough to bathe or shower myself, even she stayed out of the bathroom. And of course, my father was embarrassed even to see me in my underwear now. In fact, it was Suzette’s mother who took me for my first bra. When she volunteered for the job, Dad was visibly relieved. Mrs. Osterhouse was always offering to help me do things when it came to female necessities, but until now, I was pretty independent. Dad trusted me to do the right things anyway.
Still, I couldn’t help but envision the Dollanganger household, especially a mother parading around naked in front of a son who was almost ten.
Was Christopher really so adult about this so early in his life? Was this the way young men and young women thought of family members naked when they were destined to become doctors?
I was torn between blushing at the thought of all this nudity and trying to think like they obviously did about one another, thinking that there was nothing about them that they should be ashamed to reveal. I wanted to admire them for that, but I couldn’t help thinking about Suzette telling Lana and me about the time she saw her older brother, Jason, exploring himself and what happened as a result. I could never look at Jason afterward without thinking about it. How far would Christopher go when it came to all the sexual questions that were bound to come? Right now, he seemed so . . . indifferent. So like a scientist.
Was he capable of love? Did he ever have a girlfriend?
I returned to the pages, now feeling more like a voyeur, someone peeping in through a window and seeing the most intimate moments in the life of a family. There was a part of me that wanted to close the diary, that felt guilty about it and thought maybe my father was right, but a stronger part of me wanted to go on until I knew and understood what had really happened.